[B-RAD]

First I'd like to let everyone know that the "lady" at Taig I spoke with has been in the Hospital for a while, and today was her first day out, so prayers go out to her.


I have a thread on my SX2 Build (Featured in a tiny little spot on HOSS's website) and was originally going to CNC that mill, well as time went on and modifications happened I love the mill so much that I don't want to CNC it, and started searching for a decent ready to CNC mill, and came to the conclusion that the Taig mill fit the bill. I really hope I'm happy with my purchase.

That said, now it's time for the "CNC researching phase" of this purchase, I want Digital Drivers and all the fix'ins for this build. I was originally going to buy from "deepgroove" but had read bad reviews so decided to do it myself, the money I save will go back into the machine (probably into the stepper drivers?).

So while I'm researching, I'm hoping a few people have cnc'd this machine and know what it needs, kinda like HOSS did with the X2.

I appreciate any help and will post in this thread as my build progresses. (I like pictures)

[Dolphin USA]

You made a good choice. Most Taig users I speak with are generally happy.

Wishing the best for the lady you mentioned...

[B-RAD]

Good to hear!

Thanks, Yeah, I assume she is the co-owner of Taig?

[rowbare]

Gecko G540 based solutions are ideal for the Taig and are easy to set up. Keling also has a line of nice drives.

Whatever drive you use, don't be seduced into using the biggest motors you can find. You will get better performance with well matched smaller motors. You also want to be sure that the motors you use are well matched to the drive/power supply you will be using. Gecko's rule of thumb for motor voltage is volts = 32 * SQRT(inductance). You want to stay away from motors with really high inductance since few drives can put out the voltage they need to best perform.

There are many threads discussing drive options for the Taig. I am sure that you will find what you need in one of the.

bob

[cameraguy]

Gecko G540 based solutions are ideal for the Taig and are easy to set up. Keling also has a line of nice drives.

Whatever drive you use, don't be seduced into using the biggest motors you can find. You will get better performance with well matched smaller motors. You also want to be sure that the motors you use are well matched to the drive/power supply you will be using. Gecko's rule of thumb for motor voltage is volts = 32 * SQRT(inductance). You want to stay away from motors with really high inductance since few drives can put out the voltage they need to best perform.

There are many threads discussing drive options for the Taig. I am sure that you will find what you need in one of the.

bob

This is really good advice. Folks new to this always see 500/oz motors for the same price as a 200/oz motor and wonder 'why not?', but the performance of the 500/oz motor will be really inferior due to the high inductance. To get the power out of a motor, you first need a way to be able to put it in! There is no free lunch in physics, either.
You are looking for a motor with an inductance of about 2.2mh and a power rating around 3.5 amps (for use with the Gecko 540/48v driver). The numbers don't have to be exact. Keling has a 282/oz motor pretty ideally suited for that, and it is about as big as will suit a Taig. There are plenty of others out there though.

The thread pitch of the screws on a Taig is very high (20:1), essentially gearing the machine way down and adding mechanical advantage that way. So its not a high torque rating you need to worry about, its holding a flat torque curve at higher motor speeds. High inductance motors perform poorly at speed as their power curve decays rapidly, whereas well matched motors hold a flatter torque curve for longer. Motors in the 125/oz to 280/oz range tend to do very well on a Taig.
This is not true of many other machines with screw pitches of 3:1 or 5:1 or similar, if you are wondering why they much larger, but much slower, motors are made. The high torque/low speed combo is needed there, as very little rotation of the motor has to do a lot more work (push the machine a long way relative to your machine). They have a purpose, just not on a Taig.

[B-RAD]

Wow, great technical info guys, it sounds like deepgrooves kit would of been right up my alley, maybe I'll just copy it?

I really want digital drivers and I'll be using a smoothstepper aswell.

I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve

[cameraguy]

Wow, great technical info guys, it sounds like deepgrooves kit would of been right up my alley, maybe I'll just copy it?

I really want digital drivers and I'll be using a smoothstepper aswell.

I feel like a kid on Christmas Eve

I think you might want to wait on the smoothstepper. If you spec out the right driver and gear and the right computer to begin with then you won't need it. It would be totally redundant in your case unless you are trying to run off of an old laptop or something. Any reasonably modern small form factor desktop and you are golden - available now for less than a smoothstepper anyway.

As for the driver setup deepgroove uses - its a very basic and common setup. By all means copy it. There isn't much to it, get the G540 and 48v supply from keling. There isn't much paul actually does other than putting those same parts into a box and wiring them up together. Do that yourself just as easily.

[B-RAD]

I have an old netbook I was wanting to use, you have a good point though. I may look on eBay for some deals, as I need everything for a desktop. I use to build PC's but found out fast you can make more selling for Gold scrap than you can making the parts into a working pc and selling.

Thank You very much on the small desktop idea

[cameraguy]

I have an old netbook I was wanting to use, you have a good point though. I may look on eBay for some deals, as I need everything for a desktop. I use to build PC's but found out fast you can make more selling for Gold scrap than you can making the parts into a working pc and selling.

Thank You very much on the small desktop idea

I use a pair of dell optiplex 755's I got surplus ($70 even) to run my machines. Little tiny current-gen dual-core SFF desktops about the size of a hardcover book. Run laptop MB's in them. They have one expansion slot and most importantly parallel ports - which is rare nowadays.
Actually, most all modern SFF desktops aimed at enterprise-level use still have parallel ports on them even though consumer-level stuff lost them long ago.

Also, with that kind of speed and any decent amount of memory, you can get the additional bonus of setting the look-ahead buffer on mach pretty far out and having the native pulse count pretty high, making things run smooth on CV mode, and as fast as the machine can handle.
Since a surplus enterprise SFF and a touchscreen setup only cost me what a smoothstepper would have in the first place, I couldn't see spending more to compensate for my slow hardware problem than just to fix it properly by replacement of the hardware with current stuff.

[B-RAD]

I'll see what I can find. Most of that is new to me (mach stuff) but ill learn. We have small PC's in our wind turbines that go bad all the time, I may use one of those. Avantec pc or something like that. They go bad from Heat, Vibration and EMF.

[cameraguy]

I'll see what I can find. Most of that is new to me (mach stuff) but ill learn. We have small PC's in our wind turbines that go bad all the time, I may use one of those. Avantec pc or something like that. They go bad from Heat, Vibration and EMF.

Definitely take the time to learn Mach and how to configure it optimally. CV mode is 'Constant Velocity' mode; Instead of accelerating the machine up to speed in order to execute one line of code, decelerating to a stop at the end of line, and then moving to the next line to repeat all over again, it looks ahead and tries to predict whats coming and calculate moves in such a way as to keep the tool moving at a fairly constant speed at all times. None of this stop/start thing every second
My old Flashcut stepper system (yes, dating myself) didn't have that feature, and it made the machine sound like a barrel of monkeys playing with ball-peen hammers and was hard on the tooling and very slow. CV mode is a godsend, among other mach features, but it takes at least a moderate cpu/memory to pull it off.
While you can pull off running mach on any 10 year old box you may have lying around, and use smoothstepper to make up for the low frequency of the pulse train, a newer machine solves that issue and adds some neat features like the ability to handle CV and a reasonable 'look ahead'.

[rowbare]

Check out Intel's D525MW desktop board. It is perfect for Mach. It comes with a dual core Atom CPU and has all of the legacy ports (PS/2, serial and parallel) as well as the modern ports you would expect. It sells for about $85. I bought a mini case for about $60 and used RAM and a hard drive from a dead laptop although if I didn't already have the drive, I would have bought a small SSD.

bob

[B-RAD]

Once again great info. I may build one to suit, Im an AMD man, but may go Intel for this project.

Great people here.

[fretsman]

Check out Intel's D525MW desktop board. It is perfect for Mach. It comes with a dual core Atom CPU and has all of the legacy ports (PS/2, serial and parallel) as well as the modern ports you would expect. It sells for about $85. I bought a mini case for about $60 and used RAM and a hard drive from a dead laptop although if I didn't already have the drive, I would have bought a small SSD.

bob

Sorry to but in, but Bob, do you have any issues with the on-board video with Mach installed? May I also ask what OS you're using?

These are a nice small package and I'm interested in possibly grabbing one.

Thanks,
Dave

[rowbare]

Sorry to but in, but Bob, do you have any issues with the on-board video with Mach installed? May I also ask what OS you're using?

These are a nice small package and I'm interested in possibly grabbing one.

Thanks,
Dave

Dave,

I haven't noticed any issues related to the on board video but I haven't done any huge 3D files either. I am using XP with the latest service packs/updates as of Jan of Feb of this year.

bob

[B-RAD]

Wouldn't a PCI card with a parallel port work, or does it have to me motherboard integrated?

[fretsman]

Thanks for the info, Bob, I appreciate it.

Brad, no, I have yet to hear of a PC Card Para port work for Mach, and they (Mach) even tell you not to use them. Apparently not all the info needed is transferred through those devices.

Dave

[cameraguy]

Thanks for the info, Bob, I appreciate it.

Brad, no, I have yet to hear of a PC Card Para port work for Mach, and they (Mach) even tell you not to use them. Apparently not all the info needed is transferred through those devices.

Dave

There is a BIG difference between PCI and "PC Card" (PCMCIA). PC Card slots are meant for laptops won't work at all.

An internal PCI card in a desktop is a different animal. As far as I know, there is no problem at all using a PCI internal parallel port card, and many people do so on a regular basis with mach.

[B-RAD]

Well.. as soon as I read his post I bought a computer...
ASUS Pundit P1-PH1 Pentium 4 3.0GHz 1GB No HDD DVD No ASUS WSYS195N Pundit P1-PH1

I now wish I would of waited a short time for a "correct" answer.... ah well... I guess.... That's a forum for you...

Thanks Cameraguy, you've been a huge help!!!!

[fretsman]

Yep, my bad, I honestly thought you meant the PCMCIA because,,,,, and let's be fair here, you were wanting to use your laptop, were you not?

I'll go back to my corner now..............
Dave